A blog of the NYU Colloquium on Market Institutions and the Leipzig Colloquium on the Market Order

Institutions

Intellectual Takeout’s Luis Pablo has published a nice piece on Estonia’s astonishing development. You can find it here. He attributes this development to Estonia’s “market-oriented reforms” during the 1990s. Importantly, Estonia has sticked with the “market-oriented” approach. I suggest that this persistence might help explain why the country has fared better than most other countries following liberalization.

Since the financial crisis, trust in the European Central Bank (ECB) has declined substantially among Europeans. We argue that the decline in trust is worrisome and can be both a cause and a consequence of the ECB’s policy failure.

For many years, pundits have been predicting the demise of cash for payments. Currency is bulky, dirty, subject to theft, etc. Making change at the point of payment is time consuming. The rise of e-commerce will surely bring about the demise of cash. Cash is passé.

The Federal Reserve’s (Fed) and European Central Bank’s (ECB) policy responses to the recent financial disasters offer two tales of unintended consequences. Our previous post outlined undesired effects of the Fed’s policies. In this post, we suggest that the ECB’s stabilization policy did not only fail to achieve its goals. Monetary policy has also hampered the structural adjustment of the European economy and prolonged the crisis.

I have been reading Central Bank Governance & Oversight Reform, edited by John H. Cochrane and John B. Taylor. It is a conference volume of unusually high quality with all the discussions of presentations included.

I plan to write more about the book later, but to highlight one chapter here. It goes beyond the usual topics, covered well in the book, on rules versus discretion, credible commitments, policy legislation, and the historical record.

For the month of November, Cato Unbound features an essay by me on “The Fed at 100.” Over the course of a week, there will be comments by Larry White, Scott Sumner and Jerry Jordan. I will respond to these as appropriate.

“End the Fed” has become a political slogan. Long before that, however, there was a serious academic literature on the prospects for competitive banking. I examine that literature in my posting. One interesting aspect of that literature is that important papers on free banking came out of Federal Reserve banks in the 1980s.

I argue that “the literature on free banking demonstrates the viability of private, competitive banking without a central bank.” But we now have a system of central banking almost everywhere. The fact that the road not taken would have been a viable path does not mean that we can retrace our steps and take that path now.

I devote roughly half the posting to consideration of what it would take to end the Fed. It would be a formidable but not impossible task. It is generally acknowledged that to be viable, a system of competing currencies would need convertibility into something that is in inelastic supply. Historically that has been a commodity, and I suggest gold is as good as any (though many disagree about that). What are the prospects for a return to a commodity standard?

Central banking is historically linked to governments running deficits and needing them to be financed. That is equally true today. Central banks cannot be abolished until permanent deficits are abolished, and governments are shrunk down in size. What are the prospects for that?

I have just returned from a very important conference at the Mercatus Institute at George Mason University on “Instead of the Fed: Past and Present Alternatives to the Federal Reserve System.” As the title suggests, alternatives to central banking in the past and the future were discussed. All three discussants of my posting also participated in important roles at that conference. I was a discussant of three papers, including one by Scott Sumner. So I imagine we will be continuing our dialog at Cato Unbound.

One of the most interesting discussions was among advocates of Fed abolishment and of Fed reform. All agreed that we need better monetary policy now and into the future, regardless of our differences on the issue of free banking versus central banking. I will observe that it was encouraging that people as diverse as George Selgin, Scott Sumner, Ben McCallum and I were able to arrive at a consensus.

I grant that the government “shutdown” and the perceived threat of default on the debt was a public relations disaster for the Republican Party. I think that the shutdown problems, like those of the Sequester, were grossly exaggerated by the traditional media and as well as by various left-wing hysterics. Neither of these spending or service adjustments affected the overwhelming majority of our (excessive) government spending.

The default problem could have been much worse. It would have presented the following options: Delay payments to bond holders, axe discretionary spending, and/or cut entitlement spending. Another possibility would have been to continue borrowing anyway, perhaps provoking a Constitutional problem. I believe that had this continued for only a few days not much would have happened that would not have been quickly undone afterwards. However, none of this activity would have served the interests of reducing the size and scope of government.

So what is the “dreadful lesson”? It is this. We do not know how to reduce the size of our Leviathan state. Tea Party critics are correct, for example, that the longer ObamaCare stays unaltered or unrepealed the harder it will be to get rid of it. This is not because it will suddenly turn out to be good but because, as with so many other laws, special interests will benefit and will not easily yield. How well have the efforts to find alternatives to Social Security and Medicare gone?

Provoking crises will not work. The current Republican Party does not seem competent enough to devise clever political methods to accomplish the goal of smaller government, even if it were truly willing to do so. (And that is debatable.)

In a recent piece Jesus Huerta de Soto (2012) argues that the euro is a proxy for the gold standard. He draws several analogies between the euro and the classical gold standard (1880-1912). Like when “going on gold” European governments gave up monetary sovereignty by introducing the euro. Like the classical gold standard the common currency forces reforms upon countries that are in crisis because governments cannot manipulate the exchange rate and inflate away debt. Therefore, to limit state power and to encourage e.g. labor market reforms he views the euro as second best to the gold standard from a free market perspective. Therefore, we should defend it. He finds that it is a step toward the re-establishment of the classical gold standard.

There has been much criticism of the piece that mainly addresses the inflationary bias of the ECB. I actually agree with much of it. In particular, imperfect currency areas have the potential to restrict monetary nationalism. This can be welcomed just as customs unions that allow for free trade (at least in restricted areas). But I have some trouble with De Soto’s conclusions and the view that adhering to the euro (as did adhering to gold) gives an extra impetus for market reform – in spite of the mentioned e.g. labor market reforms in Spain. Continue reading →

Cyprus is the latest country to succumb to the financial rot in the European Union. Once a banking center, its citizens now cannot pay for their own imports. Exporters are demanding cash only for goods sent to Cypriote businesses. Credit has dried up. Businesses are closing because they have no goods to sell.

The economic crises in the various countries have fallen into two types. In the first type, highly indebted governments experienced fiscal crises and could no longer service their debts. Banks had lent to these governments and their condition was impaired by the value of the government bonds falling. The economies went into recession, which was aggravated by higher taxes and enhanced collection of taxes. Greece is the poster child for a financial and economic crisis begat by a fiscal crisis. Continue reading →

I now favor expiration of the Bush era tax rates for everyone. Why? Because the only way to curb spending in the long run is to make as large a number of Americans as possible truly feel the consequences of the expenditures they appear to desire.

If Americans saw the cost of the gigantic welfare state in their paychecks, they would, I am confident, radically re-evaluate the expenditure side of the situation we are in. Then when someone comes up with a genius idea for spending, the people would think: Is it worth higher taxes? Might I not spend it better on my family, my church – or even – on… champagne? Continue reading →

Some people rest the case for representative democracy on the idea that its decisions express the “will of the people.” Those who believe this have never thought deeply about what they are saying. I am inclined, in response to these believers, to use my favorite paraphrase of Ludwig Wittgenstein, “You can mouth the words, but you cannot think the thought.”

What is the will of the people? Whatever it is, it is certainly not without contradictions, illusions, misinformation, and wishful-thinking – just like a lot of individual thought. But as an aggregation of individual thought it is a construct used to justify all sorts of things. In some people’s minds, this construct has claim to moral authority. Continue reading →

Joseph Fetz’s blog alerted me to an interesting video comparing the same intersection in New Zealand on a day when its traffic light was out versus the next day with the light back in operation. The video certainly illustrates the fact that people’s ability to achieve spontaneous order can be greater than one might suspect at first: many people would guess that the day without the light would be chaotic by comparison to the one with it, but traffic actually seems to flow better with the light off. Continue reading →

The first thing of importance I have noted is Klein, at least in the opening chapter, seems to posit a sharp dichotomy between spontaneous orders and planned orders. He uses the example of roller skaters in a rink: either they are each skating purely as they wish, or their movements are entirely planned by a “wise” planner. (This may well be modified by Klein later, but even if so, I have seen others treat this topic as if this was a simple dichotomy, so my remarks are, I think, worth making anyway.)

But real social orders are rarely (ever?) of either extreme. The extremes are ideal types, and real orders more or less instantiate the types. Continue reading →

This will not be a review of her scholarly contributions. I have already made some attempt at that in a post shortly after her richly-deserved Nobel prize in economics. And I also link an announcement of her death here.

I met Professor Ostrom at a celebration of her work at GMU after she won the prize. I was fortunate enough to be invited to dinner with her and just a few other people afterwards. I was so positively impressed by her, first, as a human being. She was kind, funny and liked a good scotch. (I stuck with the wine.) As a scholar, she was not only brilliant but she was non-dogmatic about methods, willing to learn from others, and had a wonderful combination of humility and self-confidence. She knew how important a good story is to the advancement of science, and not just heuristically.

She and Peter Boettke apparently “clicked” academically. After all, he saw her importance and published a book about her work before the Nobel Committee recognized her (and 99% of all economists ever heard of her!).

At the end of obituaries it is customary to say “she will be missed.” But, really, this time she will be missed by more than her family and friends, but by all of those who learned from her writings or from her in person. We carry on — impoverished by her death, enriched by her life.

The European crisis, in progress for years and still showing no sign of resolution, is largely the result of elite hubris. To create the euro and ram it down the throats of populations that, left to their druthers, would have stayed with their old currencies—this was a massive, top-down social engineering project. Continue reading →

I was sitting in a session of the British Political Studies Association Conference today, listening to several speakers talk about sortition (using random selection in the political process) when I was struck by a way to employ it to achieve campaign finance reform without any restriction on donations or campaign length. So, I share:

We have a problem with money corrupting the political process, and part of that problem is how long our campaigns run. How can sortition ameliorate the problem? Continue reading →

It is authored by Harvey Rosenblum, the bank’s Director of Research. Since Richard Fisher, the bank’s president, signed off on the annual report, one presumes he endorses the substance of the essay.

It is a very hard-hitting piece, arguing that “the vitality of our capitalist system and the long-run prosperity it produces hang in the balance.” It explains why TBTF is “a perversion of capitalism,” which undermines faith in markets. Rosenblum quotes Allan Meltzer on point: “Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin.”

The essay spares no sacred cows and, among other things, charges that the “the Fed kept interest rates too low for too long” in the 2000s. That directly contradicts the stated position of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. I assume there is much grinding of teeth over the essay in Washington, D.C. The essay details how government support is the source of the gigantism in banking today, and debunks the idea that efficiencies and financial innovation are the reason why, since the early 1970s, the share of banking assets belonging to the five largest banks has grown from 17 percent to 52 percent of the total. These financial institutions expand in size to capture the government support available only to the largest banks.

The essay notes that “commercial banks holding roughly one-third of the assets in the banking system did essentially fail, surviving only with extraordinary government assistance.” As noted elsewhere, “a bailout is a failure, just with a different label.” Amazingly, the report even identifies two of the failed institutions – Citigroup and Bank of America (albeit in a footnote).

It’s a lengthy essay and I recommend it to everyone interested in the issue.

By now, most readers of ThinkMarkets are aware that there is a nasty battle for control of the Cato Institute. The Koch brothers have filed a lawsuit against Cato and two individuals. It made the front page of theNew York Times earlier this week, and has been blogged about endlessly from all sides. I post this comment to offer some perspective.

I have been associated with Cato from its inception 35 years ago, and with the Kochs even before that. Charles Koch supported Austrian and libertarian activities and even attended some of them. He was approachable and happy to discuss ideas and strategy. There is now a bureaucracy surrounding his philanthropy, so I’ve had no contact with him in decades. I have only gratitude for the support provided me in the past.

I attended a two-day brainstorming summit when Cato got started. Then I spent a year at the Institute for Humane Studies in the Summer of 1977 when Cato was getting up and running in San Francisco. IHS was still in Menlo Park, CA, a short drive from Cato’s offices. That is where I first got to know Ed Crane.

I think I can say I was present from the beginning. I have since had some kind of relationship with Cato almost my entire adult, professional life. (I have never been a regular employee.)

The Koch lawsuit is fratricidal and suicidal. Even if the brothers are right on the merits of the case (which Cato denies, and on which I am not going to comment), it is a disaster for Cato and libertarianism – a cause on which the Kochs have spent millions of dollars over the years.

The aim of the lawsuit is, first, to gain effective control of Cato and oust Ed Crane from his position as president. Ed has built Cato into one of the most influential think tanks. And he is just coming off a successful $50 million capital campaign in most difficult economic times.

Taking control is surely just a preliminary. Cato’s chairman, Bob Levy, has reported on conversations with David Koch and two family representatives, who wanted closer coordination between Cato and grassroots political organizations. Cato has always been nonpartisan, and a dealer in ideas not politics.

Cato has built up its reputational capital over 35 years as an independent think tank. Forcing a partnership with organizations aligned with the Republican Party would quickly destroy that reputational capital. Just the filing of the lawsuit has done damage.

Charles and David Koch are very intelligent men, and so must understand that. One must presume they have some overarching goal whose achievement is worth sacrificing Cato. Likely, it is a commitment to defeating President Obama and gaining control of both houses of Congress. I doubt that, in the end, Cato will be of much use in that political goal. The vagaries of lawsuits ensure a prolonged fight.

The battle also has implications for many other organizations. Almost every free-market group in Washington, D.C. receives support from the Kochs. True, most do not have the organizational structure (stock ownership) that makes Cato susceptible to a takeover. But large donors can bring pressure to bear on recipients. I have been assured by contacts in other think tanks that the Kochs have never done so. But they had not done so at Cato until recently.

Even if the Kochs do not pressure any other group to become more “political,” reasonable observers will suspect that might be the case. All other Koch-supported policy groups are at risk for their reputations because of the lawsuit against Cato.

Barack Obama sounded a number of themes in his 2012 State of the Union Address this week, all underpinned by the proposition that socioeconomic ills can be solved by interventionist government in general and his administration in particular.

Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, giving the Republican rebuttal, effectively replied to the main claims. He pointed to the failure of the President’s “grand experiment in trickle-down government.” Programs spend borrowed money in attempts to boost the middle class. “In fact, it works the other way: a government as big and bossy as this one is maintained on the backs of the middle class,” Mr. Daniels said.

For those who enjoy trying to figure out what important thinkers might have thought about specific issues they never faced (and I am one of them!), the following letter I discovered will prove interesting and perhaps disconcerting to some.

Below is a brief excerpt from a letter that F.A. Hayek wrote to the journalist and political theorist Walter Lippmann in 1937.* The subject was the large modern corporation which Lippmann thought was prone to developing various degrees of monopoly power. This was a view shared by Frank H. Knight at this time, and Hayek may have agreed, at least to some extent.

The issues were: (1) Why was this the case? and (2) Was it consistent with (classical) liberalism for the government to do something about it? Continue reading →

This will be a short post. Nearby is a Venn diagram showing the intersection between Goldman Sachs and the federal government: people who before or after were attached to both.

This is one reason that the current political-economic system will continue to fail. Those who exercise positions of political influence are not about the let particular so-called private institutions go under (there have been exceptions, of course). The idea is that they will use the ill-defined systemic-risk notions to preserve the status-quo. This is why I floated, two years ago, the idea that perhaps the government must break up the large financial institutions so that they can fail without dragging us all (particularly me) down with them. My positive program for laissez-faire, so to speak.

US Mail has historical roots. What would Benjamin Franklin, who was appointed the first American Postmaster General in 1775 by the Continental Congress, do in this situation? Given the flexibility that existed in his time, he could no doubt make the changes to adapt the organization to the 21st century. That flexibility, however, is gone. Continue reading →